Fresh court hearing for pensioner

A Perthshire pensioner, spared jail after dumping human waste at the roadside in a long-running battle with the council, had a fresh court hearing fixed this week.

Eighty-two-year-old pig farmer Peter Roy, of Craigend, near Crieff, is set to appear at Perth Sheriff Court on October 28 in connection with two cases. Both have a chequered history.

One attracted 300 hours of unpaid work and the second a concurrent 100-hour community payback order.

But the work was never satisfactorily completed and the court orders were subsequently breached.

Then the coronavirus pandemic - and the resultant country-wide lockdown - intervened, resulting in several delayed and postponed court dates.

The pensioner also failed to turn up on occasions but now he has been ordered to appear personally next month in a bid to draw a line under both matters.

Imposing the lengthier period of work in January, 2019, Sheriff Lindsay Foulis told the accused that only his age - and his role in caring for his frail wife - had kept him out of prison.

Roy“deposited waste liquid and solid human excrement”after refusing to back down in a near 20-year-long feud with Perth and Kinross Council.

He admitted that he had been served with an abatement notice under the terms of the 1990 Environmental Protection Act on May 27, 2002, in respect of premises at Craigmuir, Madderty.

But between December 3, 2015, and May 11, 2017, without reasonable excuse, he failed to comply with its requirements and prohibitions.

He also pled guilty to a second charge relating to land near the road adjacent to Craigmuir.

Between December 3, 2015, and May 11, 2017, he deposited - or knowingly permitted the human excrement to be deposited there without a waste management licence.

Roy also had a 100-hour community payback order imposed by another Perth sheriff when he was found guilty after trial of failing to leave farmland near Madderty - and remove all vehicles from it - on June 20, 2017.

He was also convicted of failing to obey a direction from a police inspector at St David’s Farm and causing damage to crops there.

Evidence in respect of the breach relating to the 100-hour order was to have been heard on Wednesday of this week but that has now been delayed until October

28.